


Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

by fringeperson



Series: In the dark of the night [2]
Category: Hellsing
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Hurt/Comfort, I refuse to disavow old fics just because they're old and I'm a better writer now, Old Fic, Reliving traumatic events, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:41:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27467356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fringeperson/pseuds/fringeperson
Summary: Seras explains herself to Alucard, and for once, he listens to her.~Originally posted in '09
Relationships: Alucard & Seras Victoria
Series: In the dark of the night [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006824
Kudos: 13





	1. Sound of Silence

_Hello darkness, my old friend,  
I've come to talk with you again,  
Because a vision softly creeping,  
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,  
And the vision that was planted in my brain  
Still remains  
Within the sound of silence._

The nightmare, the memory, the horror that haunted her now. The night that she was terrorized, threatened, horrified, terrified, and turned. She talked through it all to her master. He surprised her by listening to every word she said, not interrupting, not asking questions, just listening and stroking her hair. His presence, his touch, was soothing.

She drank in his presence as she surrendered the terror that haunted her that night, and the memories it brought to her, and the sadness that enveloped it all. For this story, she started at the beginning of the end, and worked from there. It was how it made sense.

_In restless dreams I walked alone  
Narrow streets of cobblestone,  
Beneath the halo of a street lamp,  
I turned my collar to the cold and damp  
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of  
A neon light  
That split the night  
And touched the sound of silence._

She had been calm, almost confident even, when she had walked into the church with her squad mates from D-11. When she had watched both of them being killed like that, she hadn't been so confident any more, and certainly not calm. Calm was not the word to describe her at that point. At that moment she had been terrified, but as she ran the terror had morphed into a mix of horror and anger.

Emotions that spiked when that false priest had laid his clammy hands on her. Hands that were as cold as the grave he belonged in. Grey skin, but not like the ghouls, who were a rotten grey. The vampire priest was just an unhealthy looking pallid-grey, like he'd been under the weather and out of the sun for too long. But the hands were too grabby, and she didn't like that.

His voice had oozed with personal gratification as he had told her that he didn't need a fledgling, that he certainly didn't need a wilful one like her. That he would take his time to enjoy raping her before he made himself drunk on her sweet blood and had her join her team in his legion of undead slaves. No matter how strong a woman is, the fear of rape is deep-seated and powerful. Seras had screamed, and struggled harder.

_And in the naked light I saw  
Ten thousand people, maybe more.  
People talking without speaking,  
People hearing without listening,  
People writing songs that voices never share  
And no one dared  
Disturb the sound of silence._

It truly was an army of ghouls. The wretch fed, no, _gorged_ himself on the entire village, but that wasn't the worst thing. The very worst was that even the children of the village were rotten grey with glowing eyes and holding weapons. He'd raped and fed from children as well. Seras didn't even bother to wonder where this vampire had gotten all the weapons, a few of them were probably privately owned by the villagers before he fed on them, others – like the machine guns – had likely come from the black market, where they were cheap and plentiful.

The scum had plunged one hand down to the apex of her legs and started rubbing her through the three layers she was wearing that night – police issue trousers, a pair of long-johns she had thought ahead to wear for the late-autumn night, and of course her underwear – and she had tried to discourage him by kicking his shins or planting a stomp on his instep.

He hadn't been deterred. He'd even started shifting the hand that was groping harshly at her breast towards the button of her uniform shirt. That was when _he_ had come, dressed in red and black, and telling her captor about his imminent future, courtesy of the Hellsing Organisation.

Seras was scared now, not for herself any more, even if her situation hadn't really changed, but for this stranger all dressed in red. Did he not realise how impossibly he was out-numbered? What about the people who would be left behind if – when – he didn't return to them? Why did he stand there and talk when he should be running far away from there?

When the freak-show who was holding onto her gave the order to open fire, she screamed against it. She didn't know him, but she didn't want him to die. She would have run out and stood before him, taking the bullets instead, if she only could. That her death would happen that night was something she knew, but she at least wanted the right to decide how she went. If she died protecting the stranger, then at least she would have had a good death. Like her father's. He had died protecting her mother, who had died protecting her, and she had killed their murder as he raped a cooling corpse. Those were her thoughts as she watched the man being gunned down, and his blood pooling beneath him.

_Fools, said I, you do not know  
Silence like a cancer grows.  
Hear my words that I might teach you,  
Take my arms that I might reach you.  
But my words like silent raindrops fell,  
And echoed  
In the wells of silence_

The unbridled relief she felt when she saw him stand up again cancelled out her fear of being raped, even surpassed the shock of seeing the blood flowing strangely back towards him and filling in every injury he had taken. Then he'd pulled out the gun and started shooting the ghouls. Did that mean she could hope? Hope for rescue from this night?

The ghouls were gone. He had laid waste to them all with his silver gun – larger than any handgun she had ever seen before, and working in the police station gave her the opportunity to see _many_ guns. She could hear the vampire who was holding her burbling in panic. That was something she'd seen before. He'd lost control of the situation and was trying to bargain his way out of it. From the expression on the face of the stranger, he wasn't impressed.

Seras wasn't listening to her captor, she was focusing on the stranger, but she still heard some of what the creep said. The stranger was a vampire as well. She didn't know what to think of that. Obviously they were very different, but she supposed that, like any two people were different, vampires were as well.

She was the last survivor. She was held between the creep and the bullet. She was being used as a bargaining chip. She was asked about her chastity, which seemed a little much, but she was relieved to be able to answer yes, that the creep hadn't gotten that far yet. She felt the bullet tear through her, and screamed in pain.

That was where the dream stopped, the nightmare. Once she woke up though, the memories of the night kept coming.

_And the people bowed and prayed  
To the neon god they made.  
And the sign flashed out its warning,  
In the words that it was forming.  
And the signs said, the words of the prophets  
Are written on the subway walls  
And tenement halls.  
And whispered in the sounds of silence._

Through the pain, she saw him standing over her. Was barely able to make out the words he said. She was dying. Of course, hurting as much as she did, it made sense that she was dying. Seras had never believed that there was such a thing as a painless death, except perhaps by drugs, or of old age in your sleep, but she never expected such a death for herself. Somehow, she had expected a painful death like this.

It didn't feel over though. Her life that is. There was something, someone, she could reach out to, and if she died without reaching, then she would have lost something. She wanted to know that she was _with_ someone when she died. She had lived most of her life alone, lonely, or separate from those around her. Dying the way she had lived was probably some kind of poetry, but someone was there, and while they were, and she still had some little amount of strength, she would reach out to them.

She hadn't expected to wake up from that night.


	2. I Am A Rock

_A winters day  
In a deep and dark December;  
I am alone,  
Gazing from my window to the streets below  
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.  
I am a rock,  
I am an island._

Once upon a time she'd been a police officer, and they'd called her 'Kitten'. She hadn't liked the nickname, but she hadn't been able to shake it either. She'd object, the squad would laugh, and they continued to call her 'Kitten', explaining that it was because she was so cute. The name had lasted until the day they had all died in Cheddar.

Perhaps if any of them had known about her past, they wouldn't have called her that. Or maybe they would have anyway. After all, even kittens have claws hidden away in their softly padded paws.

No, Seras decided. If the guys had ever found out about her being orphaned, and the circumstances around her being in that situation, they wouldn't have called her 'Kitten'. They would have called her Loony, or something like that instead, maybe Butch if she had been lucky.

_I've built walls,  
A fortress deep and mighty,  
That none may penetrate.  
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.  
Its laughter and its loving I disdain.  
I am a rock,  
I am an island._

In the orphanage, there wasn't much in the way of nicknames that weren't descriptive of the child in some way. Seras could remember there being Big Billy, Greasy Jenkins, Pigtail Harriet, Tall Jan, Jonny Freckles, lots of other kids as well. She hadn't interacted much. She'd been dubbed Sad Queen Victoria – a reference to the Queen Victoria, who had spent her life in mourning for her husband.

If nothing else was said in favour of that orphanage, it gave the kids a good education while they were there. The food hadn't killed them either, and the beds were warm enough in the nights.

Seras had been allowed to shut herself off from the other children though. All she knew of socialising, she knew from watching those around her, rather than trying it for herself.

_Don't talk of love,  
But I've heard the words before;  
Its sleeping in my memory.  
I wont disturb the slumber of feelings that have died.  
If I never loved I never would have cried.  
I am a rock,  
I am an island._

When the couples came, Seras had tried to be nice, like the other children, but she hadn't been able to do any better than merely polite, and when they found out about her parents, and what she had done, any spark of interest was quickly snuffed out. No one wanted to adopt a child that could be problematic. Certainly not a violent child, however innocent looking she might be.

Who knew if next time, she would kill someone who merely _looked like_ the one who had murdered her parents? Or worse, if there was no reason at all. How could anybody bear to raise a child who had killed a man with a fork?

Seras had stayed at the orphanage until the age of consent, when she had been told to find a job and an apartment for herself and leave the orphanage. She would have to make it on her own in the world. With a little help from the orphanage staff, she had an apartment and a job at a local supermarket within the week.

_I have my books  
And my poetry to protect me;  
I am shielded in my armour,  
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.  
I touch no one and no one touches me.  
I am a rock,  
I am an island._

She had seen the ad in the paper one day. The police academy was accepting applicants. She had immediately thought of her father. In a heartbeat she went to enrol. Once her application had been accepted the drilling had begun. Morals, ethics, law, correct practices and ways to approach witnesses and suspects. How to fire a gun. How to know when it was better to _not_ use said gun.

What to do and what not to do was who she had become with the police training. The stricture forbade any deviance from what was deemed correct behaviours. Then she had become a vampire, and she had to drink blood. A problem morally and ethically as she had been drilled, a deviant behaviour that was not to be tolerated. It was wrong, bad, not normal.

How could she be a vampire if she was being reminded of who she was as a police woman? A woman who didn't deviate, who didn't cry, who suffered through being called 'Kitten' all the time. A woman who clicked her heals together and saluted properly. A woman who cleaned a standard officer's piece in a minute flat. A woman who had hunted down a man who had drained the blood from a village, and had seen her whole squad die there because of the deviant one.

_And a rock feels no pain;  
And an island never cries. _

Could her master not see that she needed to be called by her own name by _somebody_ after all these years? That as long as he called her 'Police Girl' she would be reminded of when she walked in the sun and ate shepherds pie. That was a time when, if she heard about someone getting their kicks drinking blood, she would have volunteered to be on the squad to hunt them down and kill the sicko.


	3. Mrs Robinson

_And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson  
Jesus loves you more than you will know (Wo, wo, wo)  
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson  
Heaven holds a place for those who pray  
(Hey, hey, hey...hey, hey, hey)_

_We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files  
We'd like to help you learn to help yourself  
Look around you, all you see are sympathetic eyes  
Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home_

When she had first come to Hellsing, Seras had been out of her depth. Police training had nothing on this place. Integra's private army, dedicated to the extermination of things that had once been human. Like her.

Seras couldn't help but be reminded of the crusades to the Holy Land, and the treatment of the Jews by the Germans during the war. Attack, exterminate, feel no guilt because it was in the name of God. Seras wasn't a Catholic. She wasn't a Protestant either. Not Anglican, not Pentecostal, definitely not a Jehova's Witness, a Morman or a Seventh Day Adventist.

_And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson  
Jesus loves you more than you will know (Wo, wo, wo)  
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson  
Heaven holds a place for those who pray  
(Hey, hey, hey...hey, hey, hey)_

Bible study had been part of the orphanage education though, each child had been handed a bible when they came, according to their reading ability. Seras had two, because she'd held onto her father's. She'd read the whole thing through every year, though she skipped over the genealogies most of the time, and knew enough to form her own opinion of the book, God, and Jesus. She didn't go to church.

Some of the stories had left her very unimpressed with humans. Bits like "it was the season that the kings went to war", and the whole of Song of Songs was just dumb. The number of verses that were just _waiting_ to be misquoted, taken out of context, and turned inside out to mean something other than what was intended was worrying as well.

Being plunged into Hellsing doctrine had upset her a bit. That prayer that got said before the missions. "In the name of God and Her Majesty the Queen, impure souls of the living dead shall be banished into eternal damnation. Amen." Of course, it was mildly better than the drivel spouted by the Catholics, who thought it was their divine right and duty to kill anyone and everything that wasn't one of them. Extremists everywhere, Seras had decided, were exactly the same. It was always "Divine right and duty". At least the Protestants weren't as long-winded about it.

_Hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes  
Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes  
It's a little secret, just the Robinsons' affair  
Most of all, you've got to hide it from the kids_

_Coo, coo, ca-choo, Mrs Robinson  
Jesus loves you more than you will know (Wo, wo, wo)  
God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson  
Heaven holds a place for those who pray  
(Hey, hey, hey...hey, hey, hey)_

Seras prayed every night when she was human. Now she prayed every morning. She didn't care if everybody told her she was a damned thing now, a creature who would never see God's grace and mercy. Why should she care when she knew they were wrong? There was a time when white, Eastern Europeans believed that anybody who looked different was not really human, classing them as animals, useful only as slaves, creatures without culture or history.

That lesson had been hard learnt, but they had managed, and survived, and been better for it. Now they all watched the nature channel together in different rooms. Seras had the theory all right and correct in her head, but going from prey to predator took some adjusting – and that was what she had been forced to do when she became a vampire.

It was a bit hard to surpass her humanity when she was being reminded of it all the time. 'Police Girl'. Police are not to deviate from the norm, from what is lawful and correct. Drinking blood was not 'normal', and Seras was still new to being something other than human. Perhaps in ten years, she would be able to drink blood while her master called her 'Police Girl', but not yet.

_Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon  
Going to the candidates debate  
Laugh about it, shout about it  
When you've got to choose  
Ev'ry way you look at it, you lose_

_Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio  
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you (Woo, woo, woo)  
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson  
Joltin' Joe has left and gone away  
(Hey, hey, hey...hey, hey, hey)_

Alucard looked down at the fledgling who had told him her story, explained herself to him, and he could not feel the disgust for her that he had displayed so openly before. He had demanded that she tell him everything, and she had told him more than he expected, though perhaps less than there was.

It was clear that she felt some relief at being able to tell him all that was bothering her, giving her the chance to let him see her for what she was, rather than where she fell short of what he wanted her to be. He would need time to think on all that she had told him. For now though, he would not call her 'Police Girl' any longer.


	4. Bridge Over Troubled Water

_When you're weary, feeling small,  
When tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all;  
I'm on your side. when times get rough  
And friends just cant be found,  
Like a bridge over troubled water  
I will lay me down.  
Like a bridge over troubled water  
I will lay me down._

Alucard reached down to his fledgling and gathered her into his arms, pulling her into his lap. A position he knew she wouldn't have ever presumed to occupy on her own, but would accept if he put her there. Sometimes, he wondered why she accepted everything he did so easily, while rejecting so much of what he said.

Now though, he seemed to have the answer. She was conditioned, all her life, in obedience, in being what other people determined her to be. Yet through it all she struggled to find her own sense of self, without the influence of others, striving to not be defined by the labels they – _he_ – had given her.

Well, Alucard knew now that she would grow stronger with encouragement through adversity, rather than simply more words to be endured. He had been cruel and crazed for so long, he had to wonder if he was capable of being even vaguely nurturing. That he cared enough to try would prove to be evidence enough.

_When you're down and out,  
When you're on the street,  
When evening falls so hard  
I will comfort you.  
I'll take your part.  
When darkness comes  
And pains is all around,  
Like a bridge over troubled water  
I will lay me down.  
Like a bridge over troubled water  
I will lay me down._

For a while he just held her, absently rubbing small, soothing circles into her arm with his thumb. When he spoke, it was without the scorn, the harshness, the deep-seated bitterness, the madness, or even the black humour that Seras was used to colouring her master's voice.

"I will stop calling you 'Police Girl'," he said at last, pulling back just slightly so that he could look her in the eyes as he spoke. "But you are still _mine_ , Seras Victoria." If he could not use his pet name any more, then he had to make that point perfectly clear.

"Of course I am Master," Seras answered, surprised that he felt the need to point it out. She knew she was his, more than she liked sometimes, and more, it seemed, than he realised. "That is why I didn't drink your blood when you offered it," she explained softly, hiding her face against his chest again, knowing she was unlikely to hear a heartbeat.

_Sail on silver girl,  
Sail on by.  
Your time has come to shine.  
All your dreams are on their way.  
See how they shine.  
If you need a friend  
I'm sailing right behind.  
Like a bridge over troubled water  
I will ease your mind.  
Like a bridge over troubled water  
I will ease your mind. _

Alucard looked down at his draculina in shock. He had never suspected that of her, never expected it when he claimed her that night. The ancient vampire felt his own expression soften slightly when he took in her tentatively hopeful gaze.

"You're going to have to convince the Frenchman to stop with his silly pet name quickly, or I may rip his tongue out," Alucard said. "It would be terribly unfair to allow _him_ a pet name for you, but not me."

"He calls me a pet name?" Seras asked, confused. "I nearly never listen to anything he says. I'll deal with him later, I promise Master."

Alucard nodded his approval. "Then, since you have had most of your blood tonight, and obeyed my orders so fully, what shall I teach you as your reward? Perhaps to transform yourself, would you like that Seras?"

A large grin took over her face and she seemed younger for a moment in her delight.

"Yes Master, I would like that very much. Thank you Master."

Her innocent smile was contagious, and Alucard felt a soft smile settle on his face as he looked at her, and began his instruction.


End file.
